CREAL, an ISGlobal allied center, has designed a plan to disseminate the CityAir app, a product of the EU-project CITI-SENSE, so that people will use it more frequently during a small campaign of two to three weeks. The objective of this campaign is for researchers to have more information about how people use the app.

 In June we have three events that we can use in order to disseminate the CityAir app:

 -          Festa de la Bici (Bycicle Fair): on June 12^th, from 10am to 1pm; we will have a space in the Festa de la Bicicleta (in Diagonal, near Pl. Glories) where we will give information about the PASTA EU-project and the CityAir app. We will prepare a leaflet about the app.

 -          Festa de la Ciència (Science Fair): Ione Avila-Palencia will give a speech about city and mobility in the Science Fair at Ciutadella Park (Barcelona) on June 18^th from 7:40pm to 8:10pm. We can hand-out the same CityAir app leaflet .

 -          Satellite event of the Festa de la Ciència (Science Fair): we have organized a satellite event in the framework of the Science Fair. It is an ESAIRE workshop and it will take place on June 20^th at the PRBB. During this workshop we can explain what the CityAir app is and tell of the campaign 'Colour Barcelona' for two weeks to use it.

 We have prepared a leaflet in order to hand it out during the three events. An emphasis will be made on the fact that the application is a work in progress and developers are invited to improve it for further use – all code, etc, is made available online for them to access (on the project web portal <http://co.citi-sense.eu/>.

 At the end of the campaign, the researchers want to either hold a public event where the two-week campaign is explained in a non-technical way, and have invited different stakeholders. At this event we’d like to have a 15/30-minute focus group exercise to evaluate the potential use of the application. If the event seems too difficult to organise, then an online piece will be written and direct readers to both the project web portal (to learn more about the project and its products) and also a Google Forms questionnaire to collect similar ‘usefulness’ data online.

LINKS TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE APP:

ANDROID: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.cordova.CityAir 

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/es/app/cityair-perception/id1045646666?mt=8

CHECK THE RESULTS OF THE CAMPAING: http://toolbox.citi-sense.eu/Barcelona.html

CityAir is an application created by the CITI-SENSE team for citizens to help us to color the air pollution.

Air pollution is invisible but affects the health of people. With this application you can help to colour the air pollution by rating the air quality where you are: green if air quality is very good, yellow if air quality is good, orange is air quality is poor and red if air quality is very poor. You can also indicate the source of the pollution (i.e. traffic, wood burning, industry, etc.) and write a comment.

Their contributions help create a citizens air quality map. Other users will be able to see your air quality rates and comments in real-time. Some people are very sensitive to air pollution and your information can help them to avoid polluted areas.

The app is available for Android and IOS:           

                                                                                     

iSPEX is a scientific project that aims to measure the atmospheric aerosols. Spectropolarimeter for Planetary EXploration (SPEX), ISPEX has been created and manufactured by the University of Leiden.

Aerosols are having a huge impact on our lives, without us being aware. These small particles, that  affect our health, are the major cause of that aircraft cannot take off when volcanic ash (so far invisible)is in the atmosphere, or even make the great unknown in our knowledge about climate change. Although we know a lot about them, there is much more to learn from aerosols and their effects on the environment.

Therefore, the objective of the ISPEX project is to measure the density of fine powder or dust particles, the size distribution, and a rough indication of the chemical composition of the particles based on the determination of the complex refractive index. The last values are important for health studies concerning fine particles. The results of the measurements ISPEX not provide measures that can be applied by official or legal regulations.

Keep in mind that ISPEX only works properly with a blue, cloudless sky. ISPEX is space technology compressed into a device attached to a smartphone, this seeks to obtain data from satellites where other scientific instruments have little or zero scope. By simply adding the add-on to an iPhone, you can use this device as a scientific instrument everyday in order to measure the amount and type of these small particles suspended in the air.

As part of the project LIGHT 2015, this initiative is being coordinated by the ICFO - Institute of Photonic Sciences, with the participation and collaboration of BCNLab (through the Office of Citizen Science) and CREAL - Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology. These institutions help to promote the event and participate and co-coordinate some of the observation points in taking scientific data.